Anya: Citizen Science in Siberia - Young Voices on Climate Change

Lynne Cherry, Young Voices for the Planet

Citizen scientist Anya, an indigenous Siberian girl, witnesses the changes in her community as a result of climate change after working with Woods Hole scientist Max Holmes' research team aboard her father's ship. She gets involved in collecting water samples to learn, and teach her schoolmates about, global warming.

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Notes from our reviewers

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Use as a prompt to get students interested in citizen science projects. Educators could potentially use this video to have students create their own project-based community service.
Video shows how scientists work together with an indigenous Siberian girl to collect data and how and why she got involved in climate science. Scientist Max Holmes briefly discusses how research and monitoring one of the 6th largest rivers in the area and collecting water samples at different seasons can give scientists better insight into how the climate is changing. Comments from expert scientist: The video highlights work that was done studying rivers in the arctic and discusses humans' role in climate change. It also encourages students to become citizen scientists by showing a teen girl who helped collect water samples for the researchers. The video is well done, short and to the point, but also has accurate scientific information around climate change and the arctic. The scientist discussed how to connect with the native community and how he learned from them as much as they may have learned from him. This highlights how people can really be involved with science and begin a dialogue with scientists.
Seeing peers engaged with a real science project and hearing about their motivation to engage in citizen science projects may motivate students to think about science and its role in their future. Comments from expert scientist: The supporting curriculum materials for teachers are very detailed and provide some ways this video can be used in classrooms. The curriculum materials have a lot of information and activities surrounding the larger project and book discussed on the website, so it almost seemed overwhelming. However, there is specifically a section on citizen science and how to bring that into a classroom that is relevant for this specific site/video and doesn't require the other lessons/units to be implemented. So teachers are able to pick and choose what curriculum they use, making it more friendly to implementation in classrooms.